EVE - Battle of Asakai

EVE Online’s complicated inter-corporate politics are often held together by fragile diplomatic treaties and economic agreements. So fragile, in fact, that a single misclick can lead to a fracas that quickly snowballs into all-out warfare. That’s what happened to two of the spacefaring sandbox MMO’s largest player alliances in the Battle of Asakai, a massive fleet vs. fleet onslaught involving 3,000 players piloting ships ranging from small interceptors to gargantuan capital ships.

Straight from the wreckage-strewn outcome of the battle, we’re breaking down the basics of what happened for everyone to truly fathom one of the biggest engagements in the game’s history.

The nutshell

On January 27, two of EVE’s largest allied groups—the ClusterF*** Coalition and the HoneyBadger Coalition—clashed with full force in the low-sec Asakai VI region of the Kurala constellation. Both sides continually supplied reinforcements for hours, including Supercarriers and Titans, two of the largest vessel types in the game. In the end, the HoneyBadgers emerged victorious against the Clusters (as we’re calling them).

The details

The belligerents

The Clusters are led by the GoonSwarm Federation Alliance, a gigantic gamer horde originating from the Something Awful forums. Its leader, The Mittani, keeps and updates one of the most popular blogs charting the various events transpiring within EVE.

The HoneyBadgers are a coalition leading the Test Alliance, the primary collection of EVE gamers populating Reddit. A sub-alliance within the HoneyBadgers, the Pandemic Legion, focuses on PVP and inciting fleet actions wherever possible.

Years before, the Test Alliance was part of the HoneyBadgers in a hulking super-coalition. Seeking to carve out a piece of the galaxy for its own, a large portion of Test broke away from the accord to form HoneyBadgers, an independently operating group still pledging allegiance to Test but not to GoonSwarm. Strained relations between Test and GoonSwarm reached a breaking point after the leadership threatened open warfare against each other.

The cause

A single misclick.

No, really: A Titan pilot beneath the Cluster banner was attempting a “bridge”—using a ship to act as an artificial warp corridor for other ships—to Asakai VI when he accidentally warped himself straight into a very surprised Pandemic Legion fleet. The pilot, named Dabigredboat, immediately came under heavy attack as the Legion pounced on the extremely valuable ship.

The battle

Both Dabigredboat and members of the Legion “bat-phoned”—called in reinforcements—additional members of their alliances over the course of the battle. Eventually, nearly the entirety of Test and GoonSwarm became involved in the tremendous tussle, including the deployment of extra Titans and Supercarriers into the fleets.

Titans and Supercarriers are two of the most expensive, deadly, and rare ship types in EVE Online. A single Titan, bristling with gun emplacements and heavy armor, can need upwards of over 900 pilots to beat down into submission. Read that again: 900 pilots. And there were more than one of those behemoths in the battle.

The results

For the HoneyBadgers, losses sustained included six Dreadnoughts, 11 Carriers, and one Supercarrier. The Clusters suffered far worse: 44 Dreadnoughts, 29 Carriers, five Supercarriers, and three Titans.

Ultimately, GoonSwarm leader The Mittani called the Battle of Asakai “a complete rout” for the powerful Something Awful alliance. Estimated ISK (EVE’s in-game currency) cost in damages are still being calculated, but early totals reach beyond 700 billion for both sides combined.

Essentially, there are two "Mega" coalitions in the game right now, the Cluster$#@! Coalition (CFC) and the Honeybadger Coalition (HBC). A coalition is a group of alliances that band together. There are also 3-4 other smaller coalitions (Russian Bloc, N3), as well as some independent notable alliances (Black Legion in this case).

These are all Nullsec powers. The HBC's core alliance is TEST; an alliance that is based from and recruits out of your favorite website, Reddit (Shameless plug: go to /r/evedreddit to check out Reddit's corporation/alliance, and click this for a free 21 day trial, then watch THIS video)! The CFC's core alliance is Goonswarm, which is based in and recruits out of your least favorite website, SomethingAwful!

Now, it would appear that these two alliances were born to be rivals, but it was not always this way. When the reddit corporation (alliances are composed over individual corporations) first joined EVE, they were attacked by the SA corporation, goonswarm; who were already very established in the EVE universe. Instead of becoming enemies, the Goons were taken aback by the adorableness of our attitude towards the game, and we became allies and soon to be best friends. They nurtured us, tought us, fought for us. Our current leader, Montolio, decided that he wanted to take a path of independence.

We met another group of players in an alliance called Pandemic Legion. They are considered the big bad guys of EVE. They posses hundreds of the Super Carriers and Titans; the most powerful ships in the game and which the pictures in the OP are mostly comprised of. Basically, these guys have a public mumble channel called OG mumble. Mumble is a program like teamspeak, if you didn't know. This was when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was popular, and some of our guys joined their channel to play with them. They befriended them, and more people joined to play and more and more. Soon, their EVE alliance had invited us to go on campaign with them; and it was hella fun. They were a bunch of old players, and our raw enthusiasm of the game seemed to make it more fun for them, and their wealth, power and experience taught us a lot.

The problem is, that our new PL friends are direct enemies with our Goonswarm bros. These tensions were drawn down, and we eventually got both of them fighting for us to attack a new threat to us in the South. But that's another story.

What's important to last night is that we chose to go with PL instead of goons, and we formed our own coalition; the HBC. Between PL's ability to drop many of the most powerful ships in the game, and our ability to rush in with hundreds of support ships to back them up, it's a potent force.

Last night, a relatively small pirate alliance that controls a good bit of territory nearby Goon-land thought that the goons may try to attack them over a local moon; which holds mineral resources. They informed a fleet commander in Pandemic Legion that this may be happening, and PL set up to ambush goons.

The goonswarm Fleet commander (FC), Dabigredboat, is a prettty interesting character, who is loved or hated throughout the game, but that's another story. Anyways, he is flying a titan. These are the most powerful ships in the game, they do a lot of damage, can take a LOT of damage, and are ridiculously expensive. Additionally, they can move across the universe rapidly with a jump drive; but they can also move OTHER SHIPS across the universe rapidly by "bridging" them.

Sidebar: EVE has an interesting feature where people can buy game time cards (30/60 day) and sell them in game for in game money; allowing wealthy people to essentially play the game for free, and allowing people who are wealthy out of game to have the money to do what they want. This provides a rare insight to the actual value of in game item. And a titan, like dabigredboat's, would cost something like $3500 dollars to buy with out of game money.

Back to the story. So basically, boat is in his titan getting ready to bridge a full fleet (~250 dudes) onto this small pirate alliance. Except he makes a mistake; he clicks JUMP instead of BRIDGE. That sends his $3,500 ship right into the middle of this pirate corporation with nobody nearby to support him. And then all hell breaks loose.

If you'll remember, PL was aware that something might be going down, and when the pirates inform them that a titan has jumped in, and not only a titan but Dabigredboat's titan, they jump in 3-4 supercarriers. Supercarriers do more damage than a titan, but don't take quite as much and aren't quite as expensive. Boat orders Goon and CFC supers to log in, and they drop a few more supers in to help boat. PL goes into hyperdrive and goes all in; they drop every supercarrier they have available, and are frantically calling everyone they know to get there as well.

And then Boat makes a crucial mistake. He should have realized that his titan and the few supers he called in to support him were going to die, and cut his losses. But instead he panics, and calls in EVERYTHING the CFC has to help get him out of there. At this point, the battle transcends hell and goes into every god damn layer of Dante's Inferno. The CFC commits every supercarrier, titan, dreadnought (basically floating gun platforms that do a ton of damage) and regular carrier (which are basically "healers") that they can. PL does the same, and the rest of the HBC is in right behind them. My fleet, and the rest of the TEST fleet burned across the universe at best speed to get into the fight, and all of our capitals (dreads/carriers) and supercapitals jumped in ahead of us.

Also, goons are not well liked in the universe of EVE. They have fought against (and won against) pretty much every major player in the game. So the rest of the smaller coalitions also jump into the fray. And even though we're technically "unfriendly", they join ourside and the whole universe of EVE piles onto the CFC. My poor laptop crashed when there were 2800 people in the solar system (And there were hundreds more in surrounding systems), but it was epic.

The CFC lost a lot of $#@!. ~44 Dreads, 29 Carriers, 5 Supercarriers and 3 Titans. The HBC and the rest of EVE lost 10 Carriers, 6 Dreads, and one Supercarrier. It's a mind boggling amount of damage done, and money lost. But that's

Thanks for the post. As a dust player im interested in the ongoings of eve. I listen to alot of eve podcasts but they manly talk to people already versed in eve, so an article like this helps make sense of whats goin on.

EVE is really a fascinating game. Getting into it was one of the best gaming decisions of mah life. Such an amazing game it blows mymind with its beauty and complexity...After playing DUST, EVE was a lot more accessible because the general mechanics are the same in both.

Events in EVE will be covered now at PSU seeing as DUST is now part of the same universe; the EVE Universe.

I really enjoyed this info article! Yeah i remember when Dust was announced, i searched youtube for Eve vids and saw all these epic battle vids. It was crazy to see everyone just attack each other. I like how its basically a universe where they decide and make history through their actions. Part of the appeal of Dust is hopefully being able to influence such universe later on.

I really enjoyed this info article! Yeah i remember when Dust was announced, i searched youtube for Eve vids and saw all these epic battle vids. It was crazy to see everyone just attack each other. I like how its basically a universe where they decide and make history through their actions. Part of the appeal of Dust is hopefully being able to influence such universe later on.

Stuff like this makes me interested in Eve, and the universe.. but I look up videos and that is just a daunting task to get into (Im also not big in MP, or paying monthly for something. If games where time in game based I'd be more willing.)

Hey Ghost, i thought we were going to get a graphics update this week? Know anything about it?

I think that's around the end of April sorry pal.

Originally Posted by Fenix

Stuff like this makes me interested in Eve, and the universe.. but I look up videos and that is just a daunting task to get into (Im also not big in MP, or paying monthly for something. If games where time in game based I'd be more willing.)

It's actually not THAT daunting. I thought so too, but it's not. You can get a 2 week trial, I REALLY recommend you do it.You don't have to get into MP if you don't want, you can just fly around space and make money to buy better ships. You level up based on time so you don't have to grind or feel bad if you are too busy to play for whatever reason. It's a really badass experience.

It's actually not THAT daunting. I thought so too, but it's not. You can get a 2 week trial, I REALLY recommend you do it.You don't have to get into MP if you don't want, you can just fly around space and make money to buy better ships. You level up based on time so you don't have to grind or feel bad if you are too busy to play for whatever reason. It's a really badass experience.

Eh, its not? May have to check it out then if you say its not that bad. Hopefully my old Geforce 250 GTS can run it decently.. (Though thats after I get off my ass and reformat my PC, its gotten really bloated and slow through all the years of installing and deleting stuff >.>)

Eh, its not? May have to check it out then if you say its not that bad. Hopefully my old Geforce 250 GTS can run it decently.. (Though thats after I get off my ass and reformat my PC, its gotten really bloated and slow through all the years of installing and deleting stuff >.>)

"It's not that bad?" man this game is BEAUTIFUL! Not just graphically, even though flying through New Eden in your ship is often a breath taking experience...the music is also amazing and the way you progress is pure genius. By the way, I'm sending this post from within EVE, the game has its own browser.

"It's not that bad?" man this game is BEAUTIFUL! Not just graphically, even though flying through New Eden in your ship is often a breath taking experience...the music is also amazing and the way you progress is pure genius. By the way, I'm sending this post from within EVE, the game has its own browser.

could not agree more!

this game really is what you make of it.

this is one of my destroyers:

and the scale of EVE is just mind blowing. here is another of my destroyers ...not that big thing, the tiny little black spec in the middle of the screen

Did you see my post in the other thread about EVE? You should start an account and just work on skilling up. It won't be long until you are learning skills that take 4 days to 3 weeks to learn . One day you will have more time, and then you can pull out your nicely levelled capsuleer...

Did you see my post in the other thread about EVE? You should start an account and just work on skilling up. It won't be long until you are learning skills that take 4 days to 3 weeks to learn . One day you will have more time, and then you can pull out your nicely levelled capsuleer...

yeah, i'd really like to get into EVE. its a phenomenal game! especially its approach to levelling.

i'll have to see around march just how much free time i can spare for the year, and at different times throughout the year.
i have a few roadtrips planned until then, im also off to the UK in June. so busy busy

but if i do find the time i'll prolly do just as you say, that way i can spend more time with the corps, and bust out the EVE character when needed

Two questions for you lot, since this is the only "EVE" thread I know of on the forum.

Whats your PC specs, and roughly how long does it take to get enough ISK to buy a month of game time?
I'm thinking Ill wait till I can afford a few months of gametime, and I fix my PC, and hopefully thats all Ill need to get my ingame income up enough to buy game time every month. Thats probably a pipe dream, and I'll probably lose interest once I start losing everything lol

Two questions for you lot, since this is the only "EVE" thread I know of on the forum.

Whats your PC specs, and roughly how long does it take to get enough ISK to buy a month of game time?
I'm thinking Ill wait till I can afford a few months of gametime, and I fix my PC, and hopefully thats all Ill need to get my ingame income up enough to buy game time every month. Thats probably a pipe dream, and I'll probably lose interest once I start losing everything lol

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